Canning Beer – 7 Seas Brewing – Gig Harbor, WA

What a great opportunity and a fantastic day. The title says it all: I was canning beers at 7 Seas Brewing. Brian and Chris showed me the ins and outs of canning beer. I am sure that big boys at Coors would say they do it better. but I have to disagree. The canning gurus at 7 Seas make it fun and they do it all with two. That’s right two guys “can” all the beer needed for next week’s orders. Brian gets the system set up as Chris is busy with the brewing process until needed. Geez, who to watch, Chris or Brian? Ok, I did both for a while. Now back to the canning. Once Brian has the tables set up and the area all cleared he puts on three cans to see if the system is in spec with the fill amount that makes for great canned beer. It is all in micrometers and they check every aspect of the can to be sure they are getting the correct numbers and the top will hold. After we verified the correct measurements and the canner was working right, it was time for a beer. You may roll your eyes but this is serious business folks. You do not want to put a Double IPA in the Pale Ale cans. So, yes, you need to verify. Oh, I guess I will taste the first beer which was the hard part. You took the time to come to this blog to read about beer – you would taste also. We had the British Pale Ale to can this day. The eight Barrel fermentor was ready with an average of a barrel an hour. You can see if all the beer was going to be canned, this is an all day event. Thank goodness this was not the case. Brian fills two cans at a time to the very top, after he has the system send in a waft of Nitrogen to cast out any oxygen that might try to linger in the can. I need to point out these are not the 12 oz cans; they are full pint 16 oz cans. Then he hands the full cans to Chris who then put the tops on and then one at a time crimps the tops with the machine. Then I did the hardest part: snapping on the 4-pack recyclable holder.
These guys where awesome – they ran this fast and they did a great job. I was there helping for about two hours before my time was up and had to go. Chris and Brian never stopped other than to check to see that the beer was clear and looked good. Oh, and that was hard because we had to taste it. The process was clean, fast and for the most part, fun. Be sure to wear rubber shoes while canning or you will have wet socks for sure.

I also got to talk with Mike and Travis the other two of the seven person operation. Mike is the head dude for 7 Seas. If you need beer, call Mike; he has all the business and mechanical know how. Travis is the Brewing Dude with a great background starting at Pelican and New Lompoc where he picked up a passion for brewing great beer. There are also three awesome ladies who work the tap room. So for this operation it takes 7 great people to keep 7 Seas running.

A huge THANK YOU to everyone at 7 Seas for showing me such a great time and for the fantastic opportunity to learn what it takes to can beer. You can rest assured no BrewDad fingers where hurt in the process.